The Day Hair Ruled the World
by genkakusalvo
Summary: Szaeyel's experiment goes badly wrong. Orihime is angsting over her treatment. Ulquiorra just wants her to behave. And then hair runs amok, threatening all of existence. Rated T for manga-level violence.


The Day Hair Ruled the World, a _Bleach_ fanfiction

Orihime sighed melodramatically, groaning and moaning while Ulquiorra tugged her behind him, attached to a leash. The orange-haired, large-breasted girl gripped the rough rope collar around her neck to make sure she could breathe, then stopped moving entirely. The arrancar kept walking, and she fell to the white ground (the white stone made up the walls and ceilings as well as the floor) and felt her center of gravity shift forward with his remorseless pulling. Her white dress collected dust and dirt from the ground.

"Hey you!" she yelled finally. "I'm getting dirty. Your boss isn't gonna be happy about that, is he?" Ulquiorra stopped and turned to face her. His large green eyes, outlined by black (just like that pitiless mouth set in a scowl) and trailing two green tear marks down his pale face, fixed on her own soft eyes.

"Stand, woman. And cease your complaining. You will exercise as commanded by Aizen-sama. You will be kept in good health, despite your attempts otherwise. And if you do not quit your obstinate behavior, I will ask Szaeyel to make a treadmill, tie you to the front, and set it on fast. Would you prefer that to a peaceful walk around the palace?" His voice was toneless, a monotone of wrath.

She stood up meekly, then screamed. A pink-haired man had wrapped his arm around her, cooing gently in her ear. "Hello there," Szaeyel, the scientist of the arrancar, said with a smirk as he slid a pair of scissors next to her ear and cut off a huge bundle of her hair. Ulquiorra disappeared and then reappeared behind her, hand outstretched to hurt Szaeyel, but the scientist had already escaped. Ulquiorra looked at Orihime, who had sat down on the floor in shock.

"My hair," she whined suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. She reached up to wipe her nose on her sleeve and left behind a trail of snot. Ulquiorra snorted disgustedly in the back of his throat.

"Woman, please refrain from doing such disgusting things while you are in my presence. Or, for that matter, ever. I am certain that Aizen-sama would not be pleased about such a thing." She glared up at him.

"You're heartless, you know."

"I have a hole in its place, woman, so I suppose your description is accurate. But it hardly matters in this current situation. Get up. Now." He pulled the rope and hauled her to a standing position, but her legs collapsed once more. And so, he dragged her back to her cell and shut the door behind her. "I will return later with your meal. I hope that your attitude has improved by then." Orihime slumped in a heap on the floor and sobbed. The loss of her hair, the symbol that she would always be protected, was too much. She had been imprisoned for too long, she knew that much. Now the beginning of the new day meant more boredom, more worry about her friends, more feelings of helplessness each time her captors forced her to bend to their whims, no longer a reason to be happy.

Last week, Aizen had wanted her to learn to cook. With Starrk. Which led to her cooking while Starrk drifted off to sleep and fell onto the stove, burning his clothes and splattering the food everywhere. It had taken ages to get the pancake batter out of his greasy, wavy brown hair. She had been forced to wash it. The smell alone was terrible, but the nagging of his servant, a small girl with half a skull helmet and a horn, capped the experience. She had whined that Orihime was doing it wrong, and what use was she if she could not even wash hair correctly? Orihime had wanted to point out that it did not look as though his hair had ever been washed properly. Instead, she was treated to hours of being told that she was incompetent and worthless as anything but a concubine, and that she would somehow manage to flub that up as well.

Meanwhile, Szaeyel hummed to himself as he soaked the beautiful hair in a tub of oils and chemicals. He was in his lab, his paradise. It was dim and dirty, but it served his purpose beautifully, being large enough to hold untold amounts of electrical equipment with uncertain purposes.

Deciding that it had been immersed for enough time, he withdrew it and attached it to electrodes. With the flick of switch, thousands of volts surged through the hair. It grew and grew, sprouting hair from hair, the hair coiling into unlikely forms, until it was about human size, though shorter than Szaeyel. It had a familiar form, with a familiar face, even though its eyes were little more than eerie indentations in its face. It was the exact duplicate of Orihime, only made out of hair. Szaeyel looked at it with love in his eyes, the thing reflected in his glasses.

"I did it!" he shrieked madly. "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Starrk, walking by the lab with a glass of milk, paused and then stuck his head in through the open door. "Dude, are you okay in there?" he inquired blearily. Szaeyel turned to look at his superior, quickly lowering his hands from where they had been, extended and raised, with the fingers hooked like claws.

"Why, yes, Starrk, I'm quite alright," Szaeyel said with a dignified tone. "Take a look at this," he said and allowed the insane smile to return to his face. Starrk studied the thing.

"What is it?"

Szaeyel considered that, letting his head bob from side to side, then, horrified, grabbed his head in both hands. "I don't know. I don't know what to name it. How has this atrocity come about? My own creation, and yet I know nothing of its capabilities, nothing of what it knows about the world, not even what it would like to be named. How on earth am I supposed to put it to any use without a name?"

Starrk backed away slowly, holding up his milk like it would somehow protect him from the mad scientist. "I dunno. It's Orihime, right? Except made out of hair. Maybe… Orihairy?" Szaeyel groaned and clapped a hand to his face. "No, no," said Starrk, "I have it: Hairihime." Szaeyel looked at him between his fingers, then slowly removed his hand.

"It might just work. That might just be the right name, Starrk." Without warning, Szaeyel hugged Starrk. "Thank you so much. If you are ever in need of something, come and ask me. I am forever indebted to you for your service today."

"Ummm… right." Starrk backed away once more, this time using his free hand to pry Szaeyel off. Once outside the lab, he ran, fearing quite logically for his life.

Orihime had finished crying, and was now trying to escape… by pounding on the door. Perhaps every little hit would make a little dent and then, little by little, the door would weaken and she could escape. No, she was not quite in her right mind, but that was only to be expected. Behind her, Hairihime smiled. Szaeyel had decided to give it to her as a sort of gift. It was by Ulquiorra's request. He had thought her to be lonely. He was right, but Hairihime was not preferable to lonliness. In face, looking back at and shuddering, Orihime thought that she would gladly betray all of her friends to Aizen if only she no longer had to deal with the vicious thing.

Hairihime gently touched her on the shoulders and she screamed, a hideous, loud scream, that woke Starrk, frightened Nnoitra out of his masturbation-induced trance and back into his clothing with the spoon-shaped headdress, caused Halibel to slip in the shower, made Yammy choke on a rib bone, induced Gin to open his eyes, and gave Ulquiorra a headache. The grim arrancar appeared beside her cell now, rubbing his temples.

"Woman, what in the name of Hueco Mundo is the problem here?"

"It's that thing!" shrieked Orihime. "That thing is going to drive me insane."

"It's made out of your hair. Shouldn't you two get along?" Ulquiorra was genuinely puzzled.

"It's scary! Though, I guess you, with your skeletal mask and hole in you wouldn't find it too frightening." Ulquiorra touched the hole in his chest rather self-consciously.

"No, I do find it rather… disturbing. But that's by Hollow standards. Surely human standards are different?" Orihime grabbed the bars on the cell door to prevent Hairihime from dragging her away.

"No, Ulquiorra. This thing is creepy by any standards." He opened the door, and she lost her grip on it, allowing Hairihime to grab her. It began to absorb her right arm. Inside its surprisingly smooth interior, she felt something sharp and painful eating her hand. It burned like fire.

"Help," she yelled. "It's- it's- _absorbing_ me." Ulquiorra assessed the situation, then drew his sword and neatly cut off her right arm. Blood poured from it. She gasped, the pain beyond belief. She summoned a shield and regenerated her arm. But a part of her was now lost forever, it seemed. Inside that _thing_.

Ulquiorra, for his part, was not very surprised. This would not be the first time that something created by Szaeyel had turned out to be evil. No, that was not such a shock. What was a shock was the effectiveness of the thing. He cut off its head with a smooth stroke, but the head only grew tendrils of hair and dragged itself back to the main body.

"Woman, get out of here," he commanded. A crowd of arrancar, attracted by Orihime's scream, stood outside the open door, gaping and gasping at the sight of Ulquiorra fighting Hairihime. He addressed them. "You, Zommari," he said to a black skinned man with spikes sticking out of his head. "Take care of her. Make sure Nnoitra doesn't get her. Aaroniero," to a man with a tube for a head, "tell Aizen of this problem. Starrk, help me." Though Starrk outranked him, the danger of a regenerating hair monster seemed more important than any slight, even if he had been the type to take those sorts of things seriously.

Cutting it to pieces proved ineffective and dangerous. One piece flew onto Starrk and began eating into him. Shooting it with ceros, deadly energy beams, only led to destroyed walls and a not very damaged Hairihime and the smell of burning hair. Finally the two retreated along with the others.

Aizen himself had come to see what the problem was. The handsome man with brown hair swept back drew his sword and hacked Hairihime to miniscule, dust particle sized pieces in an instant. Tousen, a blind man with deadlocks, used a destructive spell to burn it to ash.

Hair grew, seemingly from nowhere, until Hairihime stood unharmed before them. Aizen and Tousen retreated along with Ulquiorra and Starrk behind the blast walls. They had been installed for just such a case, as a method of sealing off anything Szaeyel created that proved to be too dangerous to keep and too difficult to destroy.

A council of war was declared. "Are all my espada present?" said Aizen. Tousen nodded. "All right. Is the woman still here? Excellent, Zommari. Is Nnoitra touching her? Good work, Grimmjow." The blue-haired arrancar had taken that opportunity to crush the hand that Nnoitra had been extending towards Orihime, held captive by Zommari.

A decision was made. They would hunt it down, trap it with Tousen's spells. A war party, consisting of Grimmjow, Aizen, Tousen, Ulquiorra, Starrk, Nnoitra, Zommari and to heal them in case of an accident and because it was her hair, Orihime, set out beyond the blast walls. Aaroniero's tube was harpooned within a few steps beyond the walls. Liquid spewed out, along with his two floating heads. The rest stared at him, horrified. Just then, a hole appeared under Nnoitra, and he fell towards lethal spikes. He managed to grab the edge away from his comrades when Hairihime appeared. It giggled, a horrible gurgling sound, then stepped on his hand. He screamed and plunged downward, a fountain of blood squirting up in his place.

Grimmjow charged at it, only to be hit with two sections of wall moving to crush him. He was flattened, blood spraying outward. Ulquiorra was next to attack, but had the sense to grab the harpoon and thow it ahead of him to avoid any more traps. Fire scorched the harpoon, allowing Ulquiorra to reach Hairihime. He used rapid, though weaker cero attacks called bala to force it backward. The force of the attacks, rather than the damage they did was the important thing. Aizen and Tousen chanted spells, Tousen's binding Hairihime within an energy cube, Aizen's a smaller, black cube inside. When it faded, the attack done, Hairihime was completely gone.

Orihime healed Nnoitra, Aaroniero, and Grimmjow, rejecting their deaths behind her shield and bringing them back to life. She finished, sweat pouring from her face, only to hear Zommari scream.

It was alive. Hairihime grinned at all of their horrified faces, then attacked. Hair enveloped them all before they could escape, and held them fast so they could not cut it. Even Aizen was within its grasp, screaming spells that did little to the impervious hair. Szaeyel had designed it far too well to be destroyed over and over with the same attack.

Just then, it stopped absorbing them and it stopped smiling. It turned slowly.

"Ohhhh…" they heard. Wonderweiss, the small, blond arrancar child had started eating Hairihime. It thrashed, but he was not to be thwarted by its attacks. He slurped, like he was eating spaghetti, and the thing was tugged, moaning, into his mouth. He gulped and swallowed, then smiled at Tousen as though expecting praise. In shock, the blind man patted the child on the head.

"You did good, Wonderweiss."

Meanwhile, Orihime was escaping.


End file.
